For a moment he sat in contemplation. Then he pulled his clothes from beneath the bed. He got up, standing brazenly in front of her in a state of half arousal. He sorted through the clothes as if unable to identify his trousers, offering her one last opportunity to have him. She held her position. When it became obvious that she couldn’t be coerced or enticed, Tastion shrugged as if to say it didn’t matter, and began to dress.
She saw as if for the first time his true nature. Although she had always desired to ride Tastion as fearlessly as she had the dragon, she would not succumb. She would have left it at that and let him go; but then, in a way that all but dared her to disagree, he muttered again, “You’ll still be mine.” His shirt was half over his head. Leodora grabbed his hand and yanked him to the steps.
“Wait, I don’t have my shirt on, Lea!”
She ignored his complaint, hauled him stumbling down the steps and through the dark below. “Lea!” he said again, but laughingly this time. He thought he had won.
Outside, on a path she could have found even on a moonless night, she led him into the deeper jungle. But she kept going, passing by their hidden spot, dragging him on. He was silent now, and even his hand in hers betrayed his tension behind her.
When she stopped, the tower of Ningle loomed overhead. Lights sprinkled on either side of it, a coruscation on the night sky, a glow suggesting lines and forms, solidity out of nothingness.
Leodora began to climb the stone steps. She still had hold of him, and he stumbled up onto the first step after her. “What are you doing? Stop it.”
She paused and looked down at him. “Climb up with me.”
His eyes traveled beyond and then back to her. He craned his neck to see if they’d been followed. “Do you want me to be banished? I can’t do this. You know I can’t—”
“It’s forbidden. Proscribed. Like me. Coming to my room and offering yourself to me naked is a crime, but you can do that. Why can’t you do this?”
“That’s different.”
“Because you want to do it. I want you to do this, but this you can’t—because you don’t want to.” She climbed another step and he tore free of her grasp. She let him go.
He slid back down a step. “Stop.”
“This is where I’m going.”
He looked at the tower, at the sky. He tried to laugh at her. “Don’t be stupid. You don’t know any more about up there than I do. You don’t know anything except stories.”
“It’s all I need to know. I can be whoever I want. You already are who you’ll always be. When my life moves forward, you won’t be part of it any longer.”
“But, Lea,” he tried desperately, “you don’t have to go now. Don’t you see? The marriage is finished. You’ve destroyed it.”
“Ah, and you don’t want to give up until you’ve had me completely. What you really want to say is that you’d have me remain on Bouyan for your pleasure.”
“And is that so awful?”
“Not for you. For you it’s idyllic. Just what you want. You ride out every morning, come back in the evening, drink and laugh with your friends, and then creep off to your kept whore. Of course you won’t be beaten to death on the morrow, either, or drowned if caught.” She climbed down past him and started back along the path. She heard him come crashing through the underbrush after her.
“It was what you wanted, too.”
She stiffened. Then she nodded. “Yes, you’re right, Tastion. It was what I once wanted, too. But it’s not what I want anymore.” She set off again. Soon he closed the gap between them again.
“I’ll tell them. I’ll tell them and they’ll keep you from leaving.”
She stopped so fast that he ran into her. She turned. In the shadows he might have been simpering, showing her how clever he was—she couldn’t be certain. She didn’t have to see his face. He had just told her what she had meant to him. They had both been teasing arousal from each other for so long, but the difference she saw now was that she might actually have loved him.
“Tell them, then,” she said. “Tell Agmeon, tell the elders. Be sure and tell them the means by which you learned it, and how many other nights we’ve spent together.